5 Minute Reads - Anthology

The Girl in the Window by anonymous_pizza

"He went outside and grabbed her, ignoring her screams as he tied her hands and feet together using a knot she absolutely couldn't escape from. Picking her up, he walked her down the lake and threw her in. She struggled for while, but once she disappeared into the depths of the cold, black water, he walked back to his cabin and went to sleep as if nothing had ever happened."

"This story sucks," Chase interrupted, getting more intoxicated by the minute. "It's not even creepy."

"Who said I was done?" Dylan said, tilting his head.

"He stuck to his daily routine, not even batting an eyelash about the fact that his daughter was gone. In his eyes, it was one less headache. One less thing to get in his way.

According to his standards, everything was going smoothly until the night he heard it...

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

He woke up in the middle of the night to the sound his daughter made only a few nights ago. Suddenly, he was angry again. How did she escape those ropes? He was sure he had tied them perfectly. Marching down the stairs, he spotted his daughter's silhouette in the front window of the cabin, continuing the same motion over and over.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

"Papa," she cried again, her voice distant and blurred, almost like a whisper. His put on his boots and stomped through the cabin, opening the front door and stepping out into the night.

He started to yell, but when he looked over at the window she was just standing in front of only a second ago, nobody was there.

He assumed he was imagining things. It was probably from the extra beer he'd been drinking after dinner, now that nobody was around to keep him from doing so. He marched back inside and went upstairs, stopping in the bathroom to throw some water on his face. He opened the medicine cabinet above the sink to get a bottle of aspirin for his growing headache, but when he closed it, the grey face of his daughter appeared behind him in the mirror.

"Papa."

He didn't even have a chance to scream before she snapped his neck and carried him into the lake. He was never seen again."

The five stayed silent. Even Chase sat up and gripped onto the edge of his seat once fear set in, though he would never admit it. The wind brought the lake back to life, sending small waves into the grass not far from where they were sitting. Apart from the cracking fire and a few crickets in the distance, not a single thing could be heard.

They were alone, and they hadn't fully understood it until that very moment.

"Whatever," Chase huffed as he stood up with his beer in his hand. "It was a stupid story. I'm going in."

He walked toward the dark cabin, leaving the other four to sit by the latke without him. Dylan sipped his beer while Angela, Chloe and Ben stayed in the same spot, huddled close together.

"Do you think it's...real?" Chloe asked, shivering as she looked out at the water. It was too dark outside. The lake that was once a beautiful piece of scenery quickly turned into something terrifying and unknown.

"Well," Ben began, rubbing Chloe's arm. "I'm not going to stick around long enough to find out."

He stood up and extended his hand to her. "You coming?"

Together they went inside, Angela and Dylan following behind them.

While the four were sleeping soundly in the bedrooms upstairs, Chase hadn't quite made it. He fell asleep on the living room couch as soon as he stepped inside. His beer had gotten the best of him, leaving him tired and disoriented when he walked through the cabin door ahead of everyone else. It wasn't the most comfortable couch in the world, but he didn't mind. At that point, anywhere was better than being outside with his friends and that stupid story.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Chase awoke in a daze, unsure of where he was or what he was hearing. The smell of stale beer and firewood surrounded him and the only thing he could make sense of was his headache; the unfortunate curse he dealt with every morning after a long night of drinking.

But this wasn't the morning.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

He rubbed his eyes and blinked excessively, trying to adjust to the darkness in the room. When his ears moved him toward the sound, he stopped at the sight of a silhouette in the window.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

"Papa." A whisper followed the annoying tapping sound which led Chase to stand up and stumble to the front door, convinced that his friends were trying to freak him out.

"Are you really trying to..." He opened the door and the cold consumed him, even more so when he noticed that there was no one standing by the window. He grunted in frustration and looked toward the lake in search of his friends.

"You guys are idiots!" he yelled, giving his surroundings one last look before going back inside. He leaned against the door and rubbed his temples. He needed at least a few more hours of sleep if he was going to deal with his friends' nonsense.

Chase went to the kitchen in search of the girls' purses, assuming that one of them would have something in there that could get rid of his headache, but they were nowhere to be found.

"Great," he said, throwing his arms in the air. The pain was somehow increasing. He used the moonlight from the window to lead him up the stairs, not caring whatsoever about waking his friends up. He was sure they were behind this, meaning that none of them would be asleep anyways.

Once he found the bathroom, he turned on the light which made his headache much worse. Shielding his eyes from the light, he felt around for the medicine cabinet, opening it and spilling pill bottles all over the floor. He crouched down and picked them up, shuffling through them until he found the one he was looking for. He opened up the childproof lid and popped two pills in his mouth before placing the bottle back in the cabinet and closing the door.

"Papa."

The grey, soaking wet face of a little girl appeared behind Chase in the mirror.

He turned around, ready to scream at the top of his lungs as he looked into her cold, dead eyes.

But he couldn't.

With a quick snap of Chase's neck, he was gone.